The provincial government has approved the land transfer of the W.R. Frose School site from Pembina Hills Public Schools to the Progressive and Coordinating Organization Agricultural Society (PACO) Agricultural Society.
Alberta Education Minister David Eggen sent a letter to PHPS approving the request April 12, which was brought forward at the board’s April 26 meeting in Barrhead.
PACO president Dave Doke said they’ve been working towards this for over a year.
“That’s been the end goal all along,” he said. “I mean that was the eventual outcome everybody was looking for. Whatever the process is, the process is.”
Doke met with PHPS administration April 28 to get the legal proceedings going to officially transfer the land title. Until that time, PHPS would continue maintaining the property.
“We didn’t discuss a timeframe but it would probably happen quick,” he said. “But barring something coming up, it should hopefully be within a couple of weeks I’m guessing — optimistically guessing, let’s put it that way.”
W.R. Frose School in Fawcett closed at the end of the 2013-2014 school year and then demolished this past November due to numerous health and safety issues.
The project was funded by the Alberta government and was tendered out at approximately $189,000.
When Pembina Hills approached PACO about taking over the empty school, Doke responded they didn’t have the funds to demolish the building, though they were still interested in the land.
The volunteer organization had sent a letter to Pembina Hills March 2 requesting the property of the former school be transferred to the group and then converted into a recreation and sports field.
Pembina Hills approved the request March 8 prior to receiving the required ministerial approval from the province.
The plan is to add baseball diamonds, a soccer field and beach volleyball court to the site, as well as expand the existing playground equipment and basketball court.
“I would like to be able to see us start getting that prepared this year to bring dirt — at the latest next year,” Doke noted.
“That might be optimistic, but we’ll see what we can do. It’s going to involve a lot of infrastructure we’re going to remove from our old diamonds. Just depends, we may have some site grading we have to do, which may change things a bit, insofar as our timeframe goes.”
Once the baseball diamonds are functional, RV camping stalls and a trailer dump will be added.
Doke noted that as a volunteer organization, funds are limited for legal fees and property taxes and although he had met informally with Westlock County, he did not know what the municipality would charge in taxes.
“There are certain costs that are involved with what we’re doing here, but are we paying any amount for the property itself? That’ll be determined,” he said. “Most of the time when this situation occurs, the property’s typically turned back to the community for whatever dollar amount they come to an agreement on, which is typically fairly low.”
